Meat Free Monday

When most of us think about dinner, meat is on the menu, but there are lots of healthy and delicious meat-free meals. By being creative and reducing your meat and fish intake you can help the environment and reduce world hunger – start with just one day a week.

Founded by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney, Meat Free Monday is a worldwide movement to encourage people to do just that. The campaign, which was launched in 2009, came about after the United Nations issued a report stating the livestock industry was responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire global transport sector, accounting for 18% of all emissions.

Here’s some food for thought:

• Meat production is responsible for 18% of all manmade greenhouse gases, with a single dairy cow emitting 19.3 pounds/8.75kg of methane annually. When compared to transportation, which accounts for 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions, you can begin to see why not eating meat on a Monday makes sense.

• According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.

• In a world where nearly one billion people are undernourished, a third of all cereal crops, and more than 90 per cent of soya, is turned into feed for farmed animals1.

• One hectare of Amazon rainforest is lost to cattle ranchers every 18 seconds .

• 60 billion animals are reared for meat globally. The majority spend their lives in small enclosures, unable to do what is natural and important to them – for example stretching out, building nests and nourishing their babies.

• If the average household cut their meat consumption in half it would have a greater impact in reducing CO2 emissions than if they cut their car usage in half.2

• In the next decade, the majority of fish we eat will be farm-raised. Each farming system has its own environmental footprint. By choosing seafood from better farms and production systems, you can play a role in reducing aquaculture’s negative impacts. Find out more